iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Certainly better than the other two options. E.g. (for all their glaring differences) PCF in France, IU in Spain (in practice, even if they formally, weirdly, went back to ML'ism a few years ago), PTB in Belgium, KPÖ in Austria..

I dunno, "social democracy with contrarian characteristics" describes most of the remaining communist parties in western Europe fairly well too, even if they're an obviously different breed from the red-brown-adjacent varieties you can find in East-Central Europe.

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Going on memory, of course, so take that for what it's worth! I don't think I checked countries elsewhere, but I doubt their numbers would look better, generally...

I was looking up how much time men vs women spend on unpaid (care, domestic) labour a few weeks ago, and what the balance of total paid+unpaid labour between men and women was. On the latter, Nordic countries and Holland were unsurprisingly better than the US, but much of the rest of Europe wasn't.

Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 4h

Italy's parliament passed Meloni's electoral reform today, with the majority bonus we know from Greece which frankly makes a mockery of democratic representation. Ironically, though, since she again ruled out cooperating with FN, right now it's the left which would benefit. x.com/Ruffino_Lore...

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What's the distinction I'm missing?

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 8h

New test. Shocker: turns out I'm pretty leftwing objetivo176.es/test?lang=en

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 8h

Like the imbalance in (child)care work doesn't exist in most of the rest of the world too. There may be a couple of exceptions in countries like Sweden, but this is not an "America problem".

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Hence "though that was certainly contested at the time". Also a good argument to be made that less prevarication on the part of the intervening Western powers would have forced the Serbs to accept a deal earlier, that wouldn't have been as bad for the future of Bosnia as this turned out to be

Eva Marie Saint's death (at age 102!) reminds me that I really should've paid more attention to Lloyd Cole lyrics

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To be fair, the pseudo-partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina may have been the only way to stop the war (though that was certainly contested at the time), but it has been a catastrophic model of governance

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

BlueSky is when a poll shows the Democratic candidate leading *by six points* IN TEXAS, and most of the comments are nevertheless people who are flummoxed that "it's still that close"

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met uitzondering van PVV en BBB, interessant genoeg

Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

How can you misread a post so badly? He obviously never assumed you were talking about Asians; he asked a rhetorical question aimed solely at pointing out what he saw as hypocrisy/double standards.

"The people who mobilized these last days wanted solutions, not elections. Going to the polls might solve Pedro Sánchez's problem, but none of theirs. To the disappointment of seeing how their efforts ended in unexpected defeat, better not add potential anger about feeling used in an electoral game"

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In contrast to the hot takes about the electoral opportunities which the Spanish government possibly gains by the right voting down its housing laws, this piece speaks to my heart: www.eldiario.es/opinion/zona...

... and the reality of them coming all to nothing once Junts (or Podemos, or more rarely PNV) torpedoes them in Parliament only surfaces after they've bounced around social media for several days.

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

One of the reasons Sanchez is still seen as the unlikely genius survivor bucking the trend of socialist failure is that international media will cover government plans with headlines like these, with pesky legislative details left to secondary paragraphs...

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I remember EurActiv from eons ago as very uneven, both in writing and content, and frequently thoroughly boring — but also often informative. Can't say I visited in years, though. The name was clunky but Rapporteur doesn't exactly carry any more oomph, and its connotations in French are unfortunate.

Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hungary is about to publish 50,000-60,000 records "that identify people listed by the Communist-era state security services as officers, informants, collaborators or recruitment targets," which were previously only available to close relatives and researchers, in a searchable online database.

thehill.com

Hungary prepares to release Communist-era records revealing state security agents and informants

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary will soon release tens of thousands of records previously restricted to broad public access that identify people listed by the Communist-era state security services…

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Uh, not great but not too bad www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Benny deleted his postand got roasted for it

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

You write "I literally never said they weren't experts"... only to immediately dismiss them again as "alleged experts". Even a ten year old can spot these kinds of contortions — and all because the NYT asked hundreds of (actual) experts and they turned out to disagree with you.

Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The NYT list itself is based on the opinions of "hundreds of stars, showrunners, craftspeople, executives and other industry experts ... actors, writers, producers" though; are they not experts, or "qualified to criticize art"?

I mean, sure, we each draw our own conclusions. It's the argument that "it's paywalls and Trump fatigue" which I find lacking in nuance. Mostly because it refuses to tackle the glaring incompatibility between the long-term horizon of those explanations and the sudden post-2024 collapse in the graph.

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"For over a century, companies have converted the things we did together into things we consume separately." Today, Americans spend just 55 minutes a day socialising — and that's including phone and video calls! Political parties both traced and pursued the same trajectory; at what cost?

Most of that has gone, in Holland too. The DSA is bringing it back — and building a movement. "For every text and email politicians send asking for donations, another could invite people to attend or host an .. event — neighborhood potlucks, kickball games before meetings, drinks after canvassing."

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Opinion | Young Democrats Are Putting the Party Back in Politics. It’s Working.

From my childhood, when my parents were in "the party," I remember May Day celebrations, my mom's "struggle choir," sundry immigrant/solidarity events, holidays with the lefty "friends of nature," endless protests. Generations before that, socialist parties and unions had marches, festivals, clubs..

nytimes.com

Fun, free events communicate a larger goal: that everyday people should be able to afford a joyful life.

Paywalls, which have gradually increased over years, cannot explain why numbers held up well all through 2022-2024 and then suddenly collapsed. Nor can Trump fatigue, when the guy has been toxifying the front pages since he first became president in 2016. What did suddenly happen in 2025-2026?

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Nee, AVROTROS doet niet mee. Zij weigerden, en daarom heeft de NPO het overgenomen, en die laat de praktische realisering door NOS uitvoeren juist omdat AVROTROS (net als KRONCRV, Max..) nogmaals liet weten dat zij er niet toe bereid waren.

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Both Linke and AfD are adept at turning out non-voters, but that doesn't mean they're turning out *similar* non-voters. E.g. a Turkish migrant in Wedding who'd given up on politics but now voted Linke is v different from a disgruntled Ossi in outer Marzahn who returned to the ballots for the AfD.

They did win over a lot of non-voters (and good for them!), but I strongly doubt that those are "people which in other constellations often would vote dumb right". The electoral maps of Die Linke and AfD in Berlin suggest otherwise, highlighting how their strengths lie in very different communities.

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You can praise Die Linke, which won the election in Berlin with 26% of the vote (+13%), for many things; but it didn't "push back the far right". The AfD was the other big winner, after all, going from 9% to 16%. Die Linke mostly pushed back the SPD (-6%) and Greens (-4%).

What struck me is that the decline mostly happened among those who "strongly approve, " suggesting it's more of a broad shift of respondents moving down the scale rather than polarisation between supporters and an increasing number of opponents

In 2019-2023, the net zero law enjoyed around 60% approval. That dropped to 54% in 2024, 52% in 2025 and just 46% approval this summer, "the first and only time in eight years that less than a majority have approved". This happened despite belief in human-driven climate change holding up at 60-61%.

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I've heard people express your complaints since Bush — in ever increasing proportions, sure, but that doesn't match with a healthy increase until 2024 and a sudden, drastic decline since. When there *is* a very obvious change in the media ecosystem that has been limited to just the past year or two

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Biden was in office since 2020 and the difference in his treatment was emerging all that time. In 2016-2020 lefties like us were already upset at how Trump's insanity was covered when Obama got shit about wearing a brown suit. Let's not even start about the role of media like the NYT in the Iraq war

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If you were confused about what data the chart specifically shows, I don't get that either, since that's spelled out right above.

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"I think this graph is a representation of that broad distrust" Did the bias and distrust you describe suddenly appear in the last two years, and not before? That seems unlikely, and therefore not a plausible explanation of the sudden, specific collapse the graph shows since 2024.

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The chart shows a steep drop-off in traffic; the text explains why.

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Joost @almodozo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

He didn't even need to click the link though, the screenshot already explains what the chart shows

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Links heeft de jaren van continue sabotage door Junts &co op het tandvlees doorstaan omdat de peilingen al snel te schrikbarend werden om vervroegde verkiezingen te overwegen. Maar een "positief voorbeeld" zou je het zelfs als je, zoals ik, met heimwee Sánchez's eerdere jaren herinnert, nooit noemen